Re: [Haskell-cafe] Writing forum software in Haskell
David House wrote: * What would be a compulsory feature list? Ability to subscribe to forums by email and to post/followup by email. Alternatively, or in addition, a two-way NNTP gateway. (If you want us forum-allergic to participate in the discussions there, that is.) ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Writing forum software in Haskell
On 9/24/06, David House [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all.The recent thread on email vs. forums inspired a bit of interest toget some forum software on haskell.org. Were we to go ahead with this,I think it'd be great to have this software written in Haskell itself. If you were to write all-new software, then I suggest:* Haskell.org single-sign-on: One username/password combination that is valid across all Haskell.org services (wiki, forums, mailing lists, CVS, etc.)* A forum-like interface to the existing mailing lists: Instead of building full-blown forum, why not create a web interface that nicely organizes the archives of the existing mailing lists into a forum-like interface. Then, add a mechanism for sending messages to those mailing lists through a forum-like posting interface (using username/password), which would result in a message being sent to the mailing lists. A lot of existing Haskell users are content with the mailing lists, I believe. Forums are not going to add a lot of value to the existing users. So, unless there is some gateway between the existing mailing lists and the forums, you should expect that most experienced Haskellers would likely ignore the forums altogether. That would make the forums less than useful, if questions were being asked in the forums that can only be answered by people that are exclusively using the mailing lists. Regards,Brian ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Writing forum software in Haskell
On 9/25/06, Brian Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 9/24/06, David House [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all. The recent thread on email vs. forums inspired a bit of interest to get some forum software on haskell.org. Were we to go ahead with this, I think it'd be great to have this software written in Haskell itself. If you were to write all-new software, then I suggest: * Haskell.org single-sign-on: One username/password combination that is valid across all Haskell.org services (wiki, forums, mailing lists, CVS, etc.) Any chance of using OpenID for the single-sign on? There currently does not exist a haskell library for OpenID but one definitely needs to be written in my opinion. OpenID was designed exactly for this purpose. Jason ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Writing forum software in Haskell
Hi, Am Sonntag, den 24.09.2006, 13:02 +0100 schrieb David House: * What would be a compulsory feature list? Stating the obvious: Haskell Syntax Highlighting (I didn't see it mentioned before, but that might be because of malaria) Greetings, Joachim -- Joachim nomeata Breitner mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | ICQ# 74513189 | GPG-Key: 4743206C JID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.joachim-breitner.de/ Debian Developer: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Writing forum software in Haskell
Hi all. The recent thread on email vs. forums inspired a bit of interest to get some forum software on haskell.org. Were we to go ahead with this, I think it'd be great to have this software written in Haskell itself. I'd also love to be involved in a collaboration should one be drummed up to write this kind of thing. Therefore, my questions: * What kind of forum are we aiming at? In my eyes, it'd be less like the bloated phpBBs out there full of oversized signatures and avatars, and more like the minimalistic bbPress on show at, for example, the WordPress support forums [1]. * What would be a compulsory feature list? * What would be a list of things to avoid like the plague? * Which web platform (HAppS, Hope, ...) would make the most appropriate target? Appreciate thoughts and opinions. -- -David House, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Writing forum software in Haskell
On 9/24/06, David House [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all. The recent thread on email vs. forums inspired a bit of interest to get some forum software on haskell.org. Were we to go ahead with this, I think it'd be great to have this software written in Haskell itself. I'd also love to be involved in a collaboration should one be drummed up to write this kind of thing. I might be able to contribute some on my spare time. Therefore, my questions: * What kind of forum are we aiming at? In my eyes, it'd be less like the bloated phpBBs out there full of oversized signatures and avatars, and more like the minimalistic bbPress on show at, for example, the WordPress support forums [1]. I'd like a very lightweight forum when it comes to the community aspects. I.e. no signatures, no avatars, or anything like that. Just usernames and posts. Probably allow non-registered messages with the option for anyone registered to remove it (say, by having two registered people clicking remove - thus reducing spam/troll problems that you get without registration). Perhaps private messages, but it's probably better to have an email proxy system where private messages get sent via email through the forum+username. For the forum itself I'd like it to be more easily accessible than phpBB etc. So a threaded interface where you can see the first post in each thread (or perhaps just the first couple of lines of the first post). If you click a post you would see the titles for all of the child posts appear in a tree structure underneath (without reloading the forum!). Now, clicking any of these should show the full post, without reloading. Similar to gmail, in other words, but with better support for threading (e.g. allow branches). Much quicker and easier to navigate than forums based on reloading the webpage. The key is that you shouldn't have to wait for a full page reload everytime you want to do something. This system (or similar) is used on some web sites (e.g shacknews.com in the comments section) and leads to a very lightweight discussion forum. A mixture between real-time chat and mailing lists. Also there would be different categories, newbies, general, etc. * What would be a list of things to avoid like the plague? Too many formatting options (italic and bold should do it), avatars, sigs etc. * Which web platform (HAppS, Hope, ...) would make the most appropriate target? Not sure. I guess that depends on what type of forum you end up building. Hope looks promising. -- Sebastian Sylvan +46(0)736-818655 UIN: 44640862 ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Writing forum software in Haskell
On Sun, 24 Sep 2006 13:20:54 +0100, Sebastian Sylvan [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: On 9/24/06, David House [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] * What would be a list of things to avoid like the plague? Too many formatting options (italic and bold should do it), avatars, sigs etc. As text is more pleasant to read in proportional fonts, and code in monospaced fonts, I think a code formatting option is important to have. Some kind of TeX-based math markup could also be a useful addition, given Haskell's ties to formal computer science. Max Strini -- http://www.fastmail.fm - The professional email service ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Writing forum software in Haskell
David House wrote:
Hi all.
The recent thread on email vs. forums inspired a bit of interest to
get some forum software on haskell.org. Were we to go ahead with this,
I think it'd be great to have this software written in Haskell itself.
[snip]
* What kind of forum are we aiming at? In my eyes, it'd be less like
the bloated phpBBs out there full of oversized signatures and avatars,
and more like the minimalistic bbPress on show at, for example, the
WordPress support forums [1].
* What would be a compulsory feature list?
1) I think anyone who posts should first have to register to avoid the
problem of spam.
2) I think it would be good if it was possible to get away from the usual
tree structure of posts. By this I mean that usually you have to choose a
post to reply to, which is awkward if you want to comment on more than one
previous post because then it's not clear what post to choose as the
parent.
As a rough idea, perhaps something which considered paragraphs(*) as the
basic unit of discourse ie
data Post = Post {_author :: !Author, _time :: !Time, _topic :: !Topic,
_paras :: ![PostPara]}
data PostPara = Own !Paragraph | Quoted !PostPara !Author !Time !Topic
data Paragraph = Text !ByteString | Code !ByteString
and I'd imagine posts being edited using an editor which displayed a
vertical sequence of PostPara's (ie edit boxes for the paragraphs you've
written yourself and some other widget involving a static text box to
display paras that you're quoting)
Multiple consecutive paras that you write yourself would just be written in
the same edit box. Actually the whole post could be written in one edit box
if there was a special escape syntax for quoting (you'd select some text in
some other post then click quote and it would be pasted into the post
you're composing surrounded by the appropriate escape sequences and source
info, and like the wiki editor, you could click preview to see how the whole
thing would look when posted).
This would give full support for DAG based discussions. (At the moment in
the mailing list if I want to reply to more than one person I have to click
reply on each email I'm replying to and cut and paste the indented text
from the second person's email into my reply to the first and hope that I
don't accidentally send the second blank reply by mistake, and if someone
has chosen to include a signature with their message or sent it using HTML
instead of plain text I have to manually indent each individual line myself
because Outlook Express doesn't display the text of signed messages but
instead puts it into a file like ATT12.txt...)
(*) Of course the above representation doesn't give any way to only quote
part of a paragraph or to split paragraphs up so it might be too inflexible.
It might also not be clear what should be regarded as a paragraph. Perhaps
span of text would be a better unit of discourse.
3) It would be nice if there was a way to put something in the centre to
be discussed from different angles, instead of always being stuck with a
linear flow, where important points made in previous posts can just get
ignored altogether because they are too far back in linear time. The
scenario I'm thinking of is:
3a) Person A makes 2 good points, A1 and A2
3b) Person B replies to A1
3c) Person C replies to B's reply of A1
3d ) Long discussion about A1
3e) A2 has completely been forgotten and is never addressed
I'm imagining a visual representation of the text in the centre with the
discussion around it though perhaps this is getting too complicated for
what's possible just with HTML.
4) Another nice feature would be the ability to just say cool or yes or
no without having to actually make a real post like a kind of vote for or
against an idea.
Anyway best of luck with whatever forum people come up with. I originally
used to post to the mailing list using the Google group fa.haskell (strange
name!!!) but though I liked the Google interface the posting didn't work
properly - my posts were delayed several days and sometimes never got there
at all.
Regards, Brian.
--
Logic empowers us and Love gives us purpose.
Yet still phantoms restless for eras long past,
congealed in the present in unthought forms,
strive mightily unseen to destroy us.
http://www.metamilk.com
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